Some interesting search phrases that have brought readers to this site recently:

southpoint hoyel haunyed – It’s not the typos that I find funny here (the keys are right next to each other), but the thought that the hotel’s air pressure problems causing whistling doorjambs may have given rise to a reputation for it being haunted.

brand names for sex – This post on gender-specific brand names (ex. “Men’s X” or “Y for Women” or simply things like dropping “Liz” from “Liz Claiborne” when selling to men), has picked up a lot of search hits, but I don’t think this one was phrased quite right. Unless they were looking for something else.

alice in wonderland tl dr – “A young girl finds herself in a magical world full of nonsense.” There, that was easy. Anyway, check out the TL;DR photos of Katie’s Alice cosplay, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland–style, from this year’s Comic-Con.

why does no one go to the gardenwalk in anaheim – Probably because there isn’t much there to go to.

zucchini spam – Wow, there’s a flashback. An oddly specific one, too. (All right, they were probably looking for a recipe.)

why are there no stars in the sky anymore – Variations on “why can’t I see stars anymore” have been landing on my thoughts about light pollution, jumping off of a photo of the Los Angeles area at night from orbit. The question isn’t funny, but this particular phrasing is just depressing.

It’s always interesting to see what people are searching for when they find this site. It’s even more interesting to look at the bottom of the list, the long tail full of one-off searches, some of which… can be really strange.

  • “what to do with tumbleweeds” — Hmm. Mash ’em, boil ’em, put ’em in a stew. Probably hit one of these.
  • “starbucks receipt fraud sandiego” — Now I’m curious. Unfortunately the search results seem to be mostly keyword farms (Only in San Diego)
  • “slave girls photos” and variations — I was lazy enough to use Google to pull up the two cosplay photos that tripped this one, and discovered a site called Leia’s Metal Bikini. Proving once again that there’s an interest group for everything on the Internet.
  • “can i get some free verse poems” — I’m not sure whether they wanted to get some poems, or read poems about people who want to get some.
  • “is raven real?” — 🙄 No, and she wasn’t two years ago either.
  • “what is avocados number” — The number of particles in a guaca-mole, of course.
  • “mopee stories” — Thankfully, these have been removed from continuity.
  • “hyena pitchers” and “pitchers of the hyena” — These are a mash-up of two hits from the last time I posted on this subject. Oddly, the only other instance of the word “hyena” on this domain isn’t there anymore.
  • “free verse poems about me” – Wow… I guess that article on self-esteem programs raising a generation of narcissists was right!
  • “hentai raven starfire teen titans” — You people scare me.
  • “where can i find free video for bare feet” — Um…. okaaayy.
  • “toe orgasm” — 😯 … I really don’t want to know.
  • “diy laptop battery” — Because nothing saves money like putting a homemade acid bath inside your computer.
  • “herakles pumpkin” — 😕 This could only pull up an archive page with unrelated posts.
  • “hot dogs logos” — They probably weren’t looking for the flying hot dogs Flash logo.
  • “do not play these songs at a wedding” — 😀 good idea.
  • “evil comics csa com” — well, there’s a Crime Syndicate of Amerika, but I didn’t realize they put out evil comics.

Does anyone know how to convince Google to prefer an HTML page over an RSS feed when serving standard search results?

With the demise of the Jamie Jack and Stench show, Another One Bites the Dust has shot back up to the top 5 pages on the site. It turns out it’s the #7 hit on Google for “jamie jack and stench.” Oddly, the comments feed for Alternative to Music? is #8. Not the post itself, which includes all the same comments, but the feed.

I don’t want to keep the feeds out of Google’s index — if someone’s looking for feeds, and mine happen to be relevant, I want them to show up. But if someone’s looking for web pages, shouldn’t Google bring up the web page with substantially similar content in favor of the feed?